Akakura Onsen Ski Resort Mountain
The landform the resort sits on: the shape of the hill beyond the pistes, how steep it gets, and where it stands among the mountains on JapowDB.
One hillside, and it falls away to the east-south-east.
Where this vertical sits among the mountains on JapowDB
550 m, more than 10 of the 34 mountains on JapowDB.
The mountain
前山 (Mae-yama)
- Above it
- 妙高山 (Myōkō-san) 2,454 m
- Landform
- Myoko is not a single cone. Its top was blown out into an explosion caldera about 3 km across, and the 2,454 m summit standing there now is a lava dome that grew inside it afterwards. Mae-yama is one of the peaks left on the rim around that hole, and the runs are on its east flank, on the outside of the old volcano. They cover a 464 m band of it and top out about 780 m below the rim peak itself.
- Rock
- The rock is andesite and basaltic andesite lava with its own pyroclastic rock, the same kind from top to bottom. Its age changes on the way down, and the change sits inside the band you ride. Sampled on the run centerlines, the ground is late Pleistocene, the body of the old volcano, from the 1,153 m top down to about 1,000 m, then Holocene from about 960 m all the way to the base. Only the top 170 m or so of this 464 m face is the old cone; everything under that is younger material that came down later. The Japan Meteorological Agency records the Akakura pyroclastic flow, named for this place, reaching the foot of the mountain about 5,300 and 4,200 years ago.
From published sources, checked by hand · 2026-09-17
That ground is outside the ski area. It is not patrolled.
Measured
01
Which way it faces
Faces east.
Most of the mapped runs fall away toward the east.
02
How steep it gets
That steep ground sits high on the mountain.
Its steepest pitch measures 31.2°.
Its steepest tenth is steeper than 2 of the 34 mountains here that carry pitch data.
12.8° the steepest tenth of runs
03
How varied it is
Its runs range from 5.8° to 19.0°.
Half of them are gentler than 9.2°. Each mark is one run.
That spread is wider than 11 of the 34 mountains here that carry pitch data.
04
What grows on it
Mostly deciduous: broadleaf woods and larch. They stand bare through the winter, so you can see a long way into them.
Read off the national vegetation survey (2024 edition), from fieldwork in 2017.
The forest on this mountain, in detail